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Review of Grisaia no Kajitsu -LE FRUIT DE LA GRISAIA-

SubjectGrisaia no Kajitsu -LE FRUIT DE LA GRISAIA-
The Fruit of Grisaia - Unrated Edition
ByHelpfulness: 1
Vote: 7.2
denp4xlyr on 2020-11-24
ReviewI got around to reading Grisaia no Kajitsu.

The common route was quite a lot of fun and surprisingly didn't drag on at all for me. I often heard about how long it was, so I was worried since I don't have much of an attention span, but it was over before I knew it, and when getting into the seriousness of the routes, I found myself kinda missing the comedy.

And there is the problem I had with Grisaia; the writing of the routes was quite a letdown. They basically all dragged on too long with the "setup", and just when things started to get exciting, the route would end. Or it wouldn't get very exciting in the first place, and I'd end up thinking "Oh, it was all resolved just like that?". Grisaia has the look of a quality VN, and indeed the art and music is great, every line is voice acted, the humour is well done and it's pretty fun to read, but in the end it's so very unambitious and bland. It does end up getting a decently positive score from me though.

My route order was Yumiko -> Michiru -> Sachi -> Amane -> Makina.

Yumiko didn't interest me much at first, she simply isn't the kind of character I like. Her route was pretty predictable and wasn't as big and explosive as I was hoping. At least my hopes weren't as high for the other routes afterwards. Unfortunately, after Yumiko's route, she grew on me more while reading through the other four routes, and by the end I found her quite dependable and likable in her own way. Kinda funny that her character grew more for me in every route but her own.

Michiru's route wasn't too bad, since I like a bit of mystery. This is actually the route I found most emotional I think, tied with Sachi's. I think some scenes were pretty terrible though; the beach scene didn't feel very in line with her character, and there was an important event that just had me groaning with annoyance in how it was just a massive plot convenience. I liked the ending of this route quite a lot though, although Michiru wasn't the one I felt emotional for, but rather a different character's situation was what I almost shed tears for. Michiru's character I found pretty fun for the entire game, she got quite a few laughs from me, but if the VN was any longer I would've started getting rather annoyed at it instead.

Sachi's route was nice since I liked her personality the most. It was all very cute (Sachi herself especially), and although tragic, I felt like the whole thing was very "wholesome" which was a bit of a change from the horrible people you get to see in the other routes. Although the route was sweet, had a cute and heart-wrenching backstory, and had a nice ending, this is when I started feeling that the meat of the story of Grisaia is built upon safe cliches and is overall pretty uninteresting. It's a good thing the comedy was mostly on point and that the characters were fun, because serious writing I can't say is the strong point of any of the authors involved. I also found Sachi quite funny so was sad to finish this route. Kind of a mix of emotions here where I enjoyed the route despite being unable to really respect the writing... Not that it was bad, but just painfully average.

I never very much liked Amane. I found her annoying, which was kinda sad because she's a very nice person at the same time. I simply can't stand the invasive personality that she has. I wasn't looking very forward to her route, but most of it was a flashback, and the flashback was probably the best part of the overall VN. Although only because of another character in the flashback, who I liked much more than any of the actual heroines... The flashback dragged on quite a bit however, but overall it really made the route. Following the flashback was a rather random climax that didn't make all that much sense. At least the epilogue had a cute loli CG.

Makina's route was like a better version of Yumiko's, but the very weak conclusion to it was a bummer. Makina was a great character though. In the common route that is. Got a bit annoying at times, and her actions in her route were... urgh. I wanted to just stop reading when I realized how the author was going to force drama. And her route really felt like it lacked a lot satisfactory interactions between her and Yuuji. Both the good and bad epilogues were rushed and lame. It was interesting to see some stuff about Yuuji and his past in this route, which made it more interesting to get through, and makes me interested in reading the sequels. Also, I really want to eat all kinds of bread after this route. Still kinda processing my overall feelings about the route, and in general, I'm not sure which routes I would consider best or worst.

Yuuji was a fun character despite being obviously a hero complex self-insert. What really pissed me off was how he was supposed to be all cool and aloof, yet he never stood his ground against any of the heroines (not counting purely comedic scenes). Very contradictory character imo. The girls would lecture him about things they have no idea of, would accuse him of stupid things, would make him out to be the bad guy when he was clearly doing good things. And he would just say "ah, yeah, you're right, I'm an idiot". While the other half of the time he would be spouting off random life advice and thinking derogatively about the other sex. He was written to be this badass that did whatever he wanted, but sometimes he was the same cringey, passive MC you see in the shittiest of harems; at times impossibly smart, at other times a total dimwit. I can definitely see why anyone would hate this VN because of Yuuji. I just tried to ignore the bad parts of his character to enjoy the VN more.

The art was overall very nice, if generic. I think the character designs of the some of the girls could've been better (Yumiko). Good amount of CGs, not much else to say. The music was quite good too, there were one or two tracks that I really enjoyed listening to. As mentioned before, every spoken line had voice acting, which is always great to see.

It feels like I could've easily rated this VN a ~4/10, but I have a chronically difficult time handing out low scores like that. After all I enjoyed reading much of the VN and liked a fair bit about it, so even if I identify some pretty large flaws, I can't say it was bad.

(Originally posted on a r/visualnovels WAYR thread.)
1 point